Today's communications technologies have brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Wireless networking technologies have addressed a number of traditional consumer demands, while further providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer. Current and impending landline networking technologies have expanded to increasingly include wireless and mobile technologies. Through these networks, information can be downloaded to desktop systems, wireless systems, etc. For example, information available via the Internet can be downloaded onto mobile wireless units, such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, etc.
One such technology facilitating the transfer of Internet content to and from wireless devices is the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), which integrates the Internet and other networks with wireless network platforms. Generally, WAP is a set of protocols that accounts for characteristics and functionality of both Internet standards and standards for wireless services. It is independent of wireless network standards, and is designed as an open standard. WAP bridges the gap between the wireline Internet paradigm and the wireless domain, to allow wireless device users to enjoy the benefits of the Internet across both platforms.
The types of information accessible via these wireline and wireless networks includes software applications and services, such as wireless services operable on wireless terminals. Improvements to wireless services are continually being made, including improvements in capacity, speed, and efficiency. Users of wireless services are obtaining increasing access to multimedia services such as video-on-demand, video conferencing, fast web access and file transfer. Existing and future services are, and will continue to be, provided by network service operators who make services and applications available to mobile device users via the network.
The “mobile Internet” relates to the accessibility of these services and applications to mobile devices operable on wireless networks. At present, the mobile Internet is being build on the World Wide Web (WWW) or WAP infrastructure. However, there is currently no official standard for identifying applications or services on the mobile Internet. Rather, applications or services are identified by the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that is used to specify the network address at which these applications or services can be accessed. For example, a particular Internet service or application is accessed by entering a URL that points to the network host offering that service or application. While this approach in some respects is a sufficient manner of accessing such services, this is largely due to the fact that generally there has been no standardization of Web or WAP applications. For example, currently available search services provided by two or more different web searching applications likely provide similar functionality, but may not operate in the same way. Identifying non-standardized applications using URLs embedding real network addresses may therefore be acceptable in some cases for accessing the respective applications.
This approach, however, breaks down when applications and services are standardized (including standards recognized by standards bodies, proprietary standards or arrangements, etc.). This is because accessing such applications through dedicated URLs fails to address situations where standardized applications and services are provided by multiple service providers. For example, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a service which has been standardized together by the WAP Forum and 3GPP. Thus, many different service providers may offer the use of the same application, and therefore the existing practice can no longer be used to properly identify the application. This is because the URL will include the network addresses of respective application/service providers. As a result, it will identify the instance of the service provided by a particular application/service provider instead of the standardized service itself. For example, a web address including “. . . companyXYZ.com/MMS” cannot identify the MMS application in general, as other operators such as companyABC will also offer the application.
Another problem with the present methodology is that in the case of a standardized application, the user agent (application software) in the mobile device will typically not be the browser that is used to access URLs in general. If the only piece of information that the mobile device has is a URL pointing to a specific host, it has no means of deciding what the appropriate user agent is to be used.
Provisioning techniques, such as the existing WAP bootstrap provisioning, address some of the needs of mobile Internet users. One reason that provisioning is used for mobile devices is that mobile terminals are by nature limited devices. They typically have limited memory, storage, and processing capabilities. Therefore, mobile devices do not include all of the components required to access new or upgraded services that may be available on the network. When a mobile user wants to utilize new or upgraded services available on the network, the terminal must be configured to use those new services. Configuring a terminal to use a service on a network is generally referred to as “provisioning” the terminal. Provisioning may be performed upon initial setup of a mobile device, or may also be performed to upgrade and/or update services and applications already being used at that mobile device.
However, current provisioning techniques do not solve the problems identified above. Rather, current provisioning techniques have a scope that is limited to parameters required to establish basic network connectivity. The information is implicitly assumed to be applicable to all applications, and there is no means of associating parameter settings with a particular application.
Accordingly, there is a need in the network communications industry to allow mobile terminals to identify specific applications provided in various network application servers, particularly where such applications are standardized and hosted by different addressable network elements. The present invention solves these and other shortcomings of the prior art, and offers numerous advantages over prior art provisioning systems and methodologies.